The Best Tokyo Books (About And Set In)
“What are the best books about or set in Tokyo?” We looked at 90 of the top Tokyo books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!
The top 11 titles, all appearing on 2 or more “Best Tokyo” book lists, are ranked below by how many lists they appear on. The remaining 50+ titles, as well as the lists we used are in alphabetical order at the bottom of the page.
Happy Scrolling!
Top 12 Books About Tokyo
11 .) Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami
- Frommers
- Tor
“A surreal coming-of-age tale that establishes Ryu Murakami as one of the most inventive young writers in the world today.
Abandoned at birth in adjacent train station lockers, two troubled boys spend their youth in an orphanage and with foster parents on a semi-deserted island before finally setting off for the city to find and destroy the women who first rejected them. Both are drawn to an area of freaks and hustlers called Toxitown. One becomes a bisexual rock singer, star of this exotic demimonde, while the other, a pole vaulter, seeks his revenge in the company of his girlfriend, Anemone, a model who has converted her condominium into a tropical swamp for her pet crocodile.”
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10 .) Dance Dance Dance (The Rat, #4) by Haruki Murakami
- Frommers
- Goodreads
High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami’s idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance
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9 .) In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami
- Frommers
- The Guardian
It is just before New Year’s. Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo’s sleazy nightlife on three successive evenings. But Frank’s behavior is so strange that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: that his new client is in fact the serial killer currently terrorizing the city. It isn’t until later, however, that Kenji learns exactly how much he has to fear and how irrevocably his encounter with this great white whale of an American will change his life.
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8 .) Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki
- Frommers
- Goodreads
Hailed by The New Yorker as “rich in understanding and insight,”Kokoro — “the heart of things” — is the work of one of Japan’s most popular authors. This thought-provoking trilogy of stories explores the very essence of loneliness and stands as a stirring introduction to modern Japanese literature.
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7 .) Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
- Goodreads
- Travel Associates
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
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6 .) Tokyo Rising – The City since the Great Earthquake
- Frommers
- Japan Visitor
With his deep feeling for Japanese literature and long personal acquaintance with Tokyo, Edward Seidensticker was able to evoke the early years of modern Tokyo in Low City, High City. Here he tells the even more startling and colorful story of how Tokyo rose from ruins — twice — to become Asia’s greatest metropolis.
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5 .) Tokyo Underworld by Robert Whiting
- Japan Visitor
- The Culture trip
In this unorthodox chronicle of the rise of Japan, Inc., Robert Whiting, author of You Gotta Have Wa, gives us a fresh perspective on the economic miracle and near disaster that is modern Japan.
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4 .) Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein
- Goodreads
- Tokyo Cheapo
“From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.
At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime . . . crime reporting, that is, at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. For twelve years of eighty-hour workweeks, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake. But when his final scoop brought him face to face with Japan’s most infamous yakuza boss—and the threat of death for him and his family—Adelstein decided to step down . . . momentarily. Then, he fought back.”
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3 .) Number9dream by David Mitchell
- Goodreads
- The Guardian
- Tor
David Mitchell follows his eerily precocious, globe-striding first novel, Ghostwritten, with a work that is in its way even more ambitious. In outward form, number9dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister’s death and his mother’s breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses—through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck—a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father’s identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer. Why is the line between the world of his experiences and the world of his dreams so blurry? Why do so many horrible things keep happening to him? What is it about the number 9? To answer these questions, and ultimately to come to terms with his inheritance, Eiji must somehow acquire an insight into the workings of history and fate that would be rare in anyone, much less in a boy from out of town with a price on his head and less than the cost of a Beatles disc to his name.
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2 .) Out by Natsuo Kirino
- Goodreads
- The Culture trip
- Travel Associates
“Natsuo Kirino’s novel tells a story of random violence in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works a night shift making boxed lunches brutally strangles her deadbeat husband and then seeks the help of her co-workers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime.
The ringleader of this cover-up, Masako Katori, emerges as the emotional heart of Out and as one of the shrewdest, most clear-eyed creations in recent fiction. Masako’s own search for a way out of the straitjacket of a dead-end life leads her, too, to take drastic action.
The complex yet riveting narrative seamlessly combines a convincing glimpse into the grimy world of Japan’s yakuza with a brilliant portrayal of the psychology of a violent crime and the ensuing game of cat-and-mouse between seasoned detectives and a group of determined but inexperienced criminals. Kirino has mastered a Thelma and Louise kind of graveyard humor that illuminates her stunning evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds and the friendship that bolsters them in the aftermath.”
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1 .) After Dark by Haruki Murakami
- Goodreads
- The Culture trip
- The Guardian
- Travel Associates
“A short, sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami’s masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore.
At its center are two sisters—Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny’s toward people whose lives are radically alien to her own: a jazz trombonist who claims they’ve met before, a burly female “love hotel” manager and her maid staff, and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman. These “night people” are haunted by secrets and needs that draw them together more powerfully than the differing circumstances that might keep them apart, and it soon becomes clear that Eri’s slumber—mysteriously tied to the businessman plagued by the mark of his crime—will either restore or annihilate her.”
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The 50+ Additional Best Books Set In Tokyo
# | Book | Author | Lists |
(Titles Appear On 1 List Each) | |||
12 | 1Q84 | Haruki Murakami | Goodreads |
13 | A Clean Kill in Tokyo (John Rain, #1) | Barry Eisler | Goodreads |
14 | A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present | Frommers | |
15 | A Tale for the Time Being | Ruth Ozeki | Goodreads |
16 | A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3) | Haruki Murakami | Goodreads |
17 | Almost Transparent Blue | Ryu Murakami | The Culture trip |
18 | And Then | Frommers | |
19 | Anthology of Japanese Literature | Frommers | |
20 | Best of Tokyo | Japan Visitor | |
21 | Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage | Haruki Murakami | Goodreads |
22 | Cool Tokyo Guide: Adventures in the City of Kawaii Fashion, Train Sushi and Godzilla | Japan Visitor | |
23 | Cruising the Anime City: An Otaku Guide to Neo Tokyo | Patrick Macias | The Culture trip |
24 | Debt of Honor (Jack Ryan Universe, #8) | Tom Clancy | Goodreads |
25 | Eating in Japan | Frommers | |
26 | Edo, The City That Became Tokyo: An Illustrated History | Japan Visitor | |
27 | Everyday Life in Traditional Japan | Frommers | |
28 | Feel and Think: A New Era of Tokyo Fashion | Various Authors | The Culture trip |
29 | Flesh and the Mirror from Fireworks | Angela Carter | The Guardian |
30 | Geisha in Rivalry: A Tale of Life, Love and Intrigue in the Shimbashi Geisha Quarter | Kafu Nagai | The Guardian |
31 | Ghostwritten | David Mitchell | Goodreads |
32 | Hardboiled Wonderland And The End of the World | Haruki Murakami | Tor |
33 | Introduction to Japanese Culture, | Frommers | |
34 | Japan: The Story of a Nation | Frommers | |
35 | Japanese Family & Culture. | Frommers | |
36 | Japanese Today: Change and Continuity | Frommers | |
37 | Kata | Tokyo Cheapo | |
38 | Kitchen | Banana Yoshimoto | Goodreads |
39 | Life in Tokyo: The Way People Live | Frommers | |
40 | Living Japanese Style | Frommers | |
41 | Lonely Planet Tokyo | Japan Visitor | |
42 | Lonely Planet’s Best of Tokyo 2018 | Japan Visitor | |
43 | Love | Hideo Furukawa | Tor |
44 | Low City, High City | Frommers | |
45 | Martial Arts & Sports in Japan | Frommers | |
46 | Model Misfit (Geek Girl, #2) | Holly Smale | Goodreads |
47 | Modern Japanese Stories: An Anthology | Frommers | |
48 | People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman | Richard Lloyd Parry | Goodreads |
49 | Ranma ½, Vol. 1 (Ranma ½ (US 2nd), #1) | Rumiko Takahashi | Goodreads |
50 | Ring (Ring, #1) | Kōji Suzuki | Goodreads |
51 | Rurouni Kenshin, Vol. 1: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story (Rurouni Kenshin, #1) | Nobuhiro Watsuki | Goodreads |
52 | Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 03 | Nobuhiro Watsuki | Goodreads |
53 | Sailor Moon, Vol. 1 (Sailor Moon, #1) | Naoko Takeuchi | Goodreads |
54 | Salaryman in Japan | Frommers | |
55 | Salvation of a Saint | Keigo Higashino | Goodreads |
56 | Sanshiro | Soseki Natsume | The Culture trip |
57 | Shōgun (Asian Saga, #1) | James Clavell | Goodreads |
58 | South of the Border, West of the Sun | Frommers | |
59 | Spring Snow (The Sea of Fertility) | Yukio Mishima | The Guardian |
60 | Subway Guide to Tokyo | Japan Visitor | |
61 | Tabloid Tokyo 2 | Frommers | |
62 | Tabloid Tokyo: 101 Tales of Sex, Crime, and the Bizarre from Japan’s Wild Weeklies | Frommers | |
63 | The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture | Frommers | |
64 | The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan | The Guardian | |
65 | The Guest Cat | Takashi Hiraide | Goodreads |
66 | The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance | Edmund de Waal | The Guardian |
67 | The Idiot | Ango Sakaguchi | The Culture trip |
68 | The Japanese Mind: The Goliath Explained | Frommers | |
69 | The Japanese Today | Frommers | |
70 | The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa | Yasunari Kawabata | The Guardian |
71 | The Street of a Thousand Blossoms | Gail Tsukiyama | Goodreads |
72 | The Sword Thief (The 39 Clues, #3) | Peter Lerangis | Goodreads |
73 | The Tale of Genji | Murasaki Shikibu | Travel Associates |
74 | The Thief | Fuminori Nakamura | Tor |
75 | The Waiting Years | Frommers | |
76 | The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle | Haruki Murakami | Goodreads |
77 | Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant Garde | Various Authors | The Culture trip |
78 | Tokyo City Atlas: A Bilingual Guide | Japan Visitor | |
79 | Tokyo Encounter | Japan Visitor | |
80 | Tokyo Pub Crawler | Japan Visitor | |
81 | Tokyo Realtime: Akihabara | Japan Visitor | |
82 | Tokyo Story | Tokyo Cheapo | |
83 | Tokyo with Children | Tokyo Cheapo | |
84 | Tokyo, the City at a Glance (Wallpaper City Guide Tokyo) | Japan Visitor | |
85 | Tokyo: A Cultural History | Frommers | |
86 | Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology | Hidenobu Jinnai | The Culture trip |
87 | Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries | Tim Anderson | Travel Associates |
88 | What’s What in Japanese Restaurants | Tokyo Cheapo | |
89 | Who Is Mr Satoshi? | Jonathan Lee | The Guardian |
90 | Winter in Tokyo | Ilana Tan | Goodreads |
8 Best Tokyo Book Sources/Lists
Source | Article |
Frommers | Recommended Books, Films & Music in Tokyo |
Goodreads | Tokyo |
Japan Visitor | Tokyo Books |
The Culture trip | 10 Books Set in Tokyo: Reading the Motley City |
The Guardian | 10 of the best books set in Tokyo |
Tokyo Cheapo | Books on Tokyo |
Tor | Five Great Genre-Bending Novels Set in Post-1970s Tokyo |
Travel Associates | Books & Films Set In Tokyo |